


The Sun Will Rise Again (and Again and Again)

by The Librarina (tears_of_nienna)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, M/M, Mention of Past Suicide Attempt, Multi, They all love each other very much, and anyone in this fic could be dating, other relationships include any you like tbh, the author is dead and your interpretation is valid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tears_of_nienna/pseuds/The%20Librarina
Summary: For Barricade Day 2020
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Joly/Bossuet Laigle/Musichetta
Comments: 13
Kudos: 142





	The Sun Will Rise Again (and Again and Again)

Enjolras isn't sleeping well again. He wakes up every morning with clenched fists and a lingering unease from forgotten dreams. It's not the stress of exams--those are over, and his summer term is fairly light this year. It's something to do with the heat, probably.

So he shows up to classes and office hours with increasingly large iced coffees, and there must be something in his expression that makes the students decide not to ask him about it. TAs are supposed to be surly, anyway. It's practically part of the job description.

After a week or so, he's practically used to it, the exhaustion and the gray haze it casts over his mind. It'll pass--it always does--he just has to press on until the heat breaks. It's never as bad after that.

Still, when Courfeyrac invites everyone to a rooftop picnic on Sunday evening, Enjolras almost begs off. Not because he thinks he'll be able to catch up on sleep, but because he's afraid he'll be terrible company.

When he voices that fear to Courfeyrac on the phone, the only response he gets is a rude raspberry sound. "Who cares? We'd rather have a grumpy Enjolras than no Enjolras at all."

And just like that, it's decided.

After they finish eating--it turns out you _can_ get pizza delivered to a rooftop, provided the delivery driver is Feuilly finishing up a shift--they sit around and bask in the setting sunlight. They're supposed to be talking about their plans for Pride in a few weeks, but the conversation seems to be going in circles. Or spirals, maybe, endlessly curving away from the center.

Even the loudest among them seem strangely subdued, and Courfeyrac, ever perceptive, is the one who brings it up.

"What's gotten into everyone today?" he demands, sitting up from his comfortable sprawl to look around the group.

There's a round of shrugs and uneasy glances. Jehan is the first to speak up.

"Sorry," he says. "It's just June gloom."

"June gloom?"

"Yeah. Back home in San Francisco, the fog rolls in around the first of June and makes everything gray and hazy and cold. Well, this is like that--only it's _everything_."

Combeferre smiles a little at that. "Everything?"

Jehan nods. "Plants wither, words fail, joy dies."

"I don't know about the plants," Bahorel says, "but the first week of June blows. It's a statistical fact."

Musichetta hums thoughtfully, fidgeting with a curl of orange peel. "Last year, Bossuet broke his arm at the start of June."

"But that could have happened to me _any_ week, let's be fair," Bossuet puts in.

There's a brief quiet while everyone frowns and considers the Junes of their past.

"Bahorel got arrested a couple of years ago," Feuilly puts in.

Bahorel snorts. "Yeah, but like Bossuet, that could have happened any time."

"But it _didn't_ ," Jehan insists. "It happened in early June."

"All right, but it wasn't that bad. That guy was a racist dirtbag. He needed punching, and I didn't end up getting charged with anything anyway."

"He did need punching," Feuilly allows. "Was that the same year that Combeferre got bronchitis?"

Combeferre shrugs. "It could have been. I was a little...out of it, for a week or two."

"That's putting it mildly," Courfeyrac counters. "You passed out in the middle of your MCAT study group!"

"Which wouldn't have happened if you'd given yourself a rest when you first started feeling bad," Enjolras adds, picking up the thread of their age-old argument.

Combeferre actually laughs. "That's a bit rich, coming from _you_ ," he says. "But you're right. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had, and I've learned my lesson," he adds virtuously.

Courfeyrac's ensuing cough sounds a little like the words _Yeah, right_.

Joly clears his throat. "I know what you're all thinking, but the accident was in November," he says, knocking lightly on the shin of his prosthetic leg.

There's a collective sigh of minor relief, like maybe this isn't significant after all. Cosette opens her mouth, maybe to change the subject to something lighter, when Joly speaks again.

"Oh, wait."

They all turn back to look at him as one.

"I, um, I found out I was going to lose the leg the next June. Ten years ago this weekend."

"Shit," Bahorel says with feeling. "All right, let's go around in a circle, then. Who's next--Eponine? Share your thoughts."

She shrugs. "June's not so bad. I like the rainstorms."

"Yes, so much that you go for night-time walks in the rain and _worry everyone to death_ ," Cosette says, with a brittle smile.

"I told you not to wait up for me, after the first time."

"Yes, well. I wasn't sleepy, anyway," she adds.

No one asks Marius; no one has to. Everyone remembers the year that his grandfather disowned him.

Combeferre frowns. "Enjolras, you got the flu a couple of summers ago, didn't you? Like, way after the end of flu season."

He shrugs. "It wasn't necessarily the flu."

"You had a fever of a hundred and two and you could barely move."

"It might have been the flu," he concedes. "But that doesn't mean anything."

"You regularly text people at like...four in the morning, too," Courfeyrac says.

"How is that relevant?"

"Because you only do it in the summer. Have you been having trouble sleeping?"

"I don't sleep well when it gets hot out," he says, a little shortly. "I don't think there's anything out of the ordinary about that." 

"No, but taken in context with everything else…"

Enjolras shakes his head. "Look at the sample size, here. These things are happening over a period of _years_. It might be slightly unusual, but it's not significant enough to call it anything but coincidence."

There's a pause while everyone considers that.

"I tried to kill myself," Grantaire says into the silence. 

"What?" Bossuet says. "You never told us--"

"It was a while ago. Sophomore year of high school. I just--everything got to be too much for me, and it was just after the school year ended. The first week of June."

"Oh, Grantaire--" Jehan launches himself at Grantaire and wraps him up in a hug.

"Hey, it's okay," he says, rubbing Jehan's back. "I spent that whole summer on lockdown, basically, and there's been a lot of therapy and medication since then. I'm okay now, I promise. But with everyone talking about the June gloom, I just realized…it lines up, that's all."

"Well, I lost my hat," Courfeyrac says primly. That wins a chuckle, easing some of the tension that's been slowly tightening its grasp on the group. But Enjolras knows Courfeyrac better than anyone else, except maybe Combeferre, and he's not sure that Courfeyrac is being entirely honest.

"All right." Musichetta stands up and turns to face them. "You all are getting really squirrely and I'm done with it. If we all survive the week, I want every single one of you at my place by noon next Saturday, with whatever clothes, meds, and movies you need to make it through the weekend, because I am not letting you out of my sight."

Maybe there's something to Musichetta's words, because none of them try to argue with her about it. Not even Enjolras, who definitely had several things planned for the weekend. He'll clear his schedule for his friends.

The sun has fully set now, and the air is starting to lose its warmth. They all lend a hand cleaning up the remnants of their picnic. Combeferre looks thoughtful--not that it's an unusual expression for him--so Enjolras nudges him gently as they sort their trash and recycling.

"You don't really believe there's something to all of this, do you?"

Combeferre shrugs. "It's certainly a statistical anomaly. I'm not prepared to state unequivocally that it's _not_ something."

Then again, this is the Combeferre who's not prepared to state unequivocally that there are no such things as ghosts, so Enjolras can't call his reaction unexpected.

"Fair enough," Enjolras says at last.

"Walk back with me?"

"Yeah, but go on ahead. I'll catch up to you."

Combeferre nods and goes back inside. Enjolras turns to where Grantaire is helping with the last of the clean-up.

"Do you have a moment?" he asks.

Grantaire shrugs, shaking crumbs out of a picnic blanket--the pigeons will eat well tonight. "Sure. What did you need?"

"I wanted to say that I'm sorry," Enjolras says, his voice quiet. "I haven't always been...understanding, with you. I didn't know things had been so rough for you in the past--but that's not an excuse. I'll do better."

"I appreciate that, but you don't have to walk on eggshells. I'm not going to break--not any more than I already have, at least," he says wryly

"You'll tell us, won't you, if it starts getting bad again? I mean, you don't have to tell everyone, and it doesn't have to be _me_ in particular, if you'd rather talk to one of the others, but--please don't try to hide it, if you're struggling."

"All right, Captain After-School-Special, I get it," he says, cracking a grin. "I do appreciate it, though. We've all got shit to work on, right?"

"Right. I'll see you Saturday, Grantaire."

"Yeah. See you then."

* * *

He makes it through the week. Every day, the sleep debt gets a little steeper, and the coffee gets a little stronger, but he makes it. Saturday morning he packs an overnight bag and walks the six blocks to Musichetta's apartment.

He shows up early, thinking he might be able to help with some shopping or other preparations, but it turns out that everyone's had a similar idea. Only Feuilly is missing, and he won't be in till late afternoon.

The apartment isn't overly large, but there's a bedroom, a spare room mostly taken up by Michetta's potter's wheel, and a living room that's just able to hold seven or eight sleeping bags, if their owners don't mind being cozy. (They don't.)

For the first few hours, it's practically a normal weekend. There's laughter, and talking, and some truly abysmal movie in the background, chosen by Bahorel and Jehan for carnage and cinematography, respectively. But as the day wears on, they're all susceptible to moments of quiet and distraction, trailing off mid-sentence or, with tragic consequences, in the middle of a game of Risk.

Food...happens, the way it often does with them. Six different people cram into the kitchen, doing things that shouldn't be possible, considering the number of available burners, and they end up with a dozen different dishes to share. The ones who didn't do the cooking do the dish-washing instead, neatly spreading the labor among all of them.

Around eleven, they start to drift off to sleep in ones and twos. After a quiet but intense discussion that no one can quite overhear, Bossuet goes to sleep in Musichetta's room, and Joly fluffs up a pillow and some blankets for the floor. Nobody asks--whatever arrangement the three of them have, it's clearly something that they've all agreed on. Cosette and Eponine decide to relive their undergrad roommate days in the pottery room, and when Marius decides to join them, no one is particularly surprised.

The rest of them are mostly strewn across the floor of the living room, except for Grantaire, who had curled himself in one corner of the sofa half an hour ago, scrolling halfheartedly through his phone. He's asleep now, though, the phone dangling perilously above the floor. Enjolras gently takes it and sets it on the end table instead.

He takes the opposite end of the sofa for himself, knowing that it'll be a while before sleep comes--if it comes at all.

He closes his eyes.

**1am**

You can't really tiptoe on a carbon fiber leg, but Joly tries anyway, picking his way through the sleeping bodies strewn around the living room. He doesn't glance at the bedroom door, doesn't let himself get jealous.

But it's not jealousy, is it? It's _envy_ . He loves Musichetta, and Bossuet loves Musichetta. There's no possessiveness there. It's just that he's come to realize he might love _Bossuet_ as well.

He makes his way to the kitchen and pulls a mug out of the cupboard. He fills the kettle and plugs it in. If he times it just right, he can pull it off the heating element before it starts to whistle, and no one will wake up.

If he doesn't time it right, well. There's enough in the kettle for several mugs of tea.

A floorboard creaks at the edge of the kitchen--maybe he hadn't been as quiet as he thought.

"Hey, Joly?"

He looks up. Bossuet is standing there, in boxers with a heart pattern on them. Joly didn't think underwear like that existed outside of a cartoon, and he's _furious_ that even ridiculous boxers look good on Bossuet.

"Hey. Want some tea?"

"Nah, I'm good. Listen, I was talking to Chetta, and, um…why don't you come to bed?"

He rolls his eyes, moving the kettle to an unused burner just as it starts to squeak. "Will you please stop trying to coddle me? I'm perfectly capable of sleeping on the floor, and we all set the schedule together. It's your turn, so--"

But Bossuet is smiling, just a little. "I didn't say I was going to leave."

Joly stares. This is probably a dream, or maybe a hallucination. Does he have a fever? Could he have contracted malaria without noticing?

"Joly? You good? You don't have to, I mean, if you don't want to. We just thought maybe you might."

"No, I do!" he says hurriedly. "Just...are you sure?"

"It's a big bed," Bossuet says. He holds out a hand, and Joly takes it, smiling.

**2am**

Cosette doesn't sleep badly, but she sleeps lightly, and so even Eponine's nearly-silent footsteps are enough to wake her as she slips past.

That, and the hissed curse as she almost knocks a freshly-glazed mug off a shelf.

Conscious of Marius still sleeping fitfully in the next sleeping bag, Cosette follows Eponine out into the hallway before she says anything.

"Ep? Is everything all right?"

She whips around, face scrunched in apology. "I didn't mean to wake you."

She shakes her head. "It's no trouble. You know how I am." A careful mouse would be enough to wake her sometimes--and, on one particularly memorable occasion, it _had_.

"How's Marius?"

"Sleeping."

"Good," Eponine says faintly. "At least one of us can."

"He doesn't talk about it, but I know it bothers him--his grandfather. I think it's getting easier, though."

"Yeah." Eponine sighs. "What a bastard that old man is."

"No argument here." Cosette knows that Eponine isn't burdened with an overabundance of good family, either--something that sometimes makes her feel guilty for the wonderful man she calls Papa. More often, though, it makes her fiercely determined to be the family they never got to have. "Do you want company?"

"No. I appreciate the offer, though. You should go back and get some sleep."

Cosette nods. "Text me when you get back? You know I don't mind if you wake me. And you _can_ wake me," she adds. "Any time. If you want to talk."

"I know. I'll be all right, though." She offers a tired half-smile. "Maybe it'll rain."

**3am**

Bahorel's sitting up, paging listlessly through this phone, when he hears Feuilly stir nearby.

"Can't sleep?" he asks, helping himself to a corner of Bahorel's sleeping bag.

Bahorel shakes his head. He feels...gutted, somehow, like he's mourning something that he can't put a name to. Ordinarily when he feels like this he goes to the gym, works on his kickboxing until he's too tired to think. When that's not an option, he loses himself in the nearest mosh pit. As a last resort, he picks a fight. Usually he even wins.

"You okay?" he asks, glancing at Feuilly.

"My sleep schedule is pretty erratic anyway." It's not exactly an answer to the question that Bahorel asked, but tonight isn't a night for pushing the point.

Bahorel frowns. There's something stilted and stiff in Feuilly's posture. "Your shoulder's pissing you off, isn't it?" He fucked it up at work a couple of years ago--probably in June, given their track record--and the shitty-ass company had denied his comp claim. It's enough to make Bahorel want to go back to law school, just to be able to sue the shit out of them.

See? Picking fights.

Feuilly shrugs--but just with his right shoulder. "I must have aggravated it somehow. It's not that bad."

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Feuilly would claim he was fine even if weasels were actively devouring his arm.

"I can help, if you want." He needs to do something, to feel in some way like he's fighting universal entropy, and if there's something he can do for one of his friends, anything at all, he wants to do it.

"Oh, you don't have to--"

"I'm offering."

Feuilly nods. "All right, yeah. That would--that would be nice."

Bahorel reaches out for him, and Feuilly shifts around to let Bahorel go to work on the stiffened muscles of his left shoulder. It feels good, putting his hands to something constructive, for once.

He works at the knots and the tension until Feuilly is bowed forward, loose-limbed and half-asleep already. Bahorel nudges him down onto the sleeping bag and tosses a blanket over him. Feuilly mumbles his thanks, and Bahorel thinks that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to rest now, too.

**4am**

When Combeferre slides open the balcony door, he's not surprised to find the tiny space already occupied. Standing at the rail, toying with the lacy fronds of a potted fern, is Courfeyrac.

"Hey," he says.

Courfeyrac nods a greeting, but he doesn't say anything.

Combeferre leans against the rail beside him, their arms barely brushing. "Lost your hat, huh?" he asks gently.

"Oh, I did," Courfeyrac replies. "It just...happened to be in the middle of the worst manic episode of my life."

"Ah."

"I wanted to break the tension, you know? So I didn't go into the details. And after what Grantaire said, it would have sounded trivial anyway."

"Your health, mental or physical, isn't trivial," Combeferre says, momentarily stern. "Do you want to talk about what happened?"

He waves a hand. "It's not that interesting. I made the same mistake everyone does--I'd been taking the meds, I got to feeling really good, and I thought I'd be okay without them. I...wasn't." He sighs. "Anyway, what about you? What's your June gloom?"

"Well, there was the bronchitis, I guess. And it feels like...like there's always this underlying sense of urgency, even when I'm just doing rounds. Like there's _more_ I should be doing. It's strongest in the early summer."

Courfeyrac elbows him gently. "You don't have to save the world on your own, you know."

"Yes, that's Enjolras' job," Combeferre replies, with a wry smile.

"He doesn't do it on his own, either. He's got us. _You've_ got us too, remember."

"I know that. I won't forget it again, I promise."

"Good."

The balcony door behind them squeaks, and a rush of cool air brushes past them.

"Oh. Hi," someone says, hesitating in the doorway. 

Courfeyrac turns around. "Come on out, there's room."

Jehan slips out through the sliding glass door. He's cradling a filled watering-can in his arms, and before he says anything he makes his way around the edge of the balcony, carefully pouring water onto the plants that Musichetta grows in her 'failed' pottery experiments.

(In the street below, a few drops fall on a woman's head in a mimicry of rain, and she smiles.)

He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. "That feels better," he says. It's not that he thinks Musichetta neglects her plants--quite the opposite. It just feels nice to contribute something. In the morning, he'll go home, but the plants will still grow and thrive, and he'll know that he helped in some small way.

"It's going to be okay, you know." He says it with a psychic's certainty, like it's not a prediction or a prayer but pure, immutable fact.

"I believe you," Combeferre says, and he truly does.

"So do--I," Courfeyrac adds, his voice cracking on a yawn.

"Thanks for your trust," Jehan says. "Now you should get some sleep."

"What about you?"

Jehan shakes his head. "I'm going to wait for the sunrise."

"Do you want company?" Courfeyrac says it because he means it; he wouldn't make the offer otherwise. Jehan knows that Courfeyrac is tired, that they all are tired in one way or another, but he also knows that he would make a pot of coffee and stand out here all night if Jehan said _yes please stay_.

The smile comes easily to his face, for the first time all evening. "No. You two go in and sleep. I'll be just fine out here." He presses a kiss to first Courfeyrac's, then Combeferre's cheek, and he slides the door closed behind them.

Jehan leans on the railing, looks up at the slowly turning stars, and waits for the future to arrive.

**5am**

Grantaire wakes in the quiet just before dawn. He's curled up on one end of the sofa, and Enjolras is huddled at the other end, long limbs tucked underneath him.

The light from the window is gray and insubstantial, and there's an ache in his chest to match it.

And it's not like high school, it _isn't_ , but his chest is tight and he feels--not hopeless, but helpless, like something irreplaceable has been lost, and he can't remember what it is. There's an urgency, too, a feeling that borders on panic. He's missed something, or forgotten it, and he can't get it back.

He has techniques for this, breathing exercises and, in extremity, a couple of Xanax tucked away in a pocket of his backpack, but he can't get to his bag without waking up half of his friends. They'd know something was wrong, and they would be _concerned_ , and he's fairly certain that any amount of attention is just going to break him down further.

He curls up tighter, pulling his knees up to his chest. He has to stop shaking or he'll wake everyone up, he'll wake _Enjolras_ up, and Enjolras already said he doesn't sleep well in the summertime.

Grantaire glances over at him. He's frowning, even in his sleep, and his hands are clenched into fists. He looks miserable.

He knows better than to let himself look too long, knows better than to _want_ , but the light in the window is tinged with gold, and it feels impossibly right to reach out and cover Enjolras' hand with his own. The lines on Enjolras' forehead smooth out, and the tension in his fist loosens, just a little.

_There you go_ , Grantaire thinks. That's better, at least. If Grantaire himself has to feel this way, at least someone else is feeling better. And truth be told, it makes him feel a little better, knowing that he's helped. Even if Enjolras can never, _ever_ know--

Then Enjolras' hand turns under his own, fingers opening to twine with Grantaire's.

For a moment he can only stare at their hands, clasped together so naturally that he can hardly believe they've never done this before. Then he realizes what it means.

He looks up, startled, and finds Enjolras looking back at him. His eyes are wide and wet, full of something like wonder, and Grantaire wonders what he was dreaming. He wonders if Enjolras remembers; he wonders if it even matters.

Grantaire draws in a breath that shudders in his chest, and that's when he realizes that he's crying, too. The ache in his chest has transformed into something else, something fierce and bright and almost as frightening. It's like there's too much inside him, fear and hope and a new sense of _rightness_ , that this is where he's always belonged, that everything in his life was leading him to this moment.

They'll have to talk about this, probably. _Definitely_. But for now Enjolras is uncurling from his end of the couch, pulling Grantaire forward to lie down beside him. Grantaire tucks his head against Enjolras' shoulder, takes a slow breath, and closes his eyes.

* * *

In the morning, Grantaire wakes to find himself falling off the sofa. He lands on the floor with a pained thump, but after Enjolras reaches down to pull him to his feet, he doesn't let go. 

Most of the others are still asleep, but Jehan is sitting out on the balcony, basking in the early sunlight. Musichetta and Joly and Bossuet are in the kitchen, making pancakes with a synchronicity that borders on uncanny. The curtains are thrown wide to let in the sun.

It's a new day. Grantaire squeezes Enjolras' hand, just a little, and he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Third time's a charm! I originally started this for Barricade Day 2018, so...you see how well my time management skills work.
> 
> I love comments and I'll try to respond (but see above, re: my time management skills). You can also come say hi at my [tumblr](http://thelibrarina.tumblr.com)!


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